Sacred alliance or pact with the devil? How and why social enterprises collaborate with mainstream businesses in the fair trade sector*

Abstract

This paper uses institutional theory to highlight different patterns of cross-sector collaboration from the perspective of social enterprises. Specifically, it explores how and why social enterprises interact with mainstream businesses and to what extent their collaboration patterns reflect a vision of how their social mission should be implemented and institutionalized. The empirical analysis is derived from a qualitative study of ‘fair trade’ – a hybrid model created by social enterprises and using market mechanisms to support small-scale producers in developing countries and to advocate for changes in international trading practices. The findings highlight three strategies used by fair trade social enterprises to manage their interactions with mainstream businesses: sector solidarity, selective engagement, and active appropriation. This paper suggests that each strategy is motivated by a different vision of how best to articulate the social mission of fair trade via specific types of collaborations. It also notes how each vision has a distinct pattern of institutionalization at the field level. This paper adds to the emergent literatures on social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, fair trade, cross-sector collaboration and hybrid organizing.     

Changing China,Changing Africa: Future Contours of an Emerging Relationship

Current China–Africa relations have been statically framed: China invests in the continent and exports resources extracted by its state‐owned enterprises and fuelled by aid flows, while simultaneously undercutting African industry through cheap exports. We frame this debate, then explore how the framework could adjust in response to changing economic realities in China, centered on the “rebalancing” of the growth model toward domestic consumption. We argue that a new wave of private sector‐led, low‐cost manufacturers may find its way to selected African shores, in the process transforming those economies and the way in which China interacts with them, both for the better.     

Listen to the voice of the customer—First steps towards stakeholder democracy

Recently, calls have grown louder for more stakeholder democracy that is, letting stakeholders participate in the process of organizing, decision‐making, and governance in corporations, especially in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Despite the relevance of the subject, the impact of customer involvement in CSR on their company‐related attitudes and behaviors still represents a major research void. The paper at hand develops a conceptual framework of consumer involvement in CSR based on the existing literature, theories of stakeholder democracy, and organizational boundaries as well as drawing from the qualitative focus group interviews (N = 24). The framework is tested on a large scale, two‐time point field‐experimental study (N = 3,397). More specifically, consumer reactions to three degrees of customer involvement (i.e., information, feedback, and dialogue) are tested in two different CSR domains (i.e., company‐internal business process vs. company‐external philanthropic CSR). Results indicate that the customer involvement in CSR has a more beneficial effect in terms of strengthening customer outcomes in CSR domains that directly affect external stakeholders of the company (i.e., philanthropic CSR) than in domains that mainly concern company‐internal stakeholders (i.e., business process CSR).     

Promoting Educated Consumer Choices. Has EU Food Information Legislation Finally Matured?

Contemporary EU food information legislation combines and balances two main consumer interests, i.e., a consumer right to information and the freedom of choice, into one single protective standard: informed choice. Although the recent legislative measures quite openly establish a link between informed choice and the rather abstract societal norm of “what is good for the consumer,” this does not justify the conclusion that food information legislation has become overly meddlesome in relation to EU consumers and their choice of food. Rather, there has been a gradual maturing of the EU legislator’s perception of its task from the mere provision of food information to ensuring educated consumer choices. This development is a logical and necessary consequence of the growing complexity of food choices.     

The American system of shared powers: the President, Congress, and the NLRB

The purpose of this article is to develop and test a model ofpolitical influence on regulation that incorporates both thecompeting interests of elected officials and the relevant institutionalconstraints. To do this, we focus on one channel of politicalinfluence: the appointment of agency leaders to a multimemberregulatory board. The model has two stages: first, a bargainingstage between the president and Senate in which they choosea target policy; and second, the appointments stage in whichthey attempt to implement this target by choosing the medianboard member. The model's empirical leverage arises becauseelected officials can replace board members only when seatson the board become available through term expiration or resignation.This yields specific predictions about how and whether eachappointment will change policy. We apply the model to the NLRB.The empirical results, investigating all appointments to theNLRB from 1949 until 1988, fit our theory remarkably well.     

Making yourself indispensable

Peter Drucker and other leadership thinkers have long argued that leaders should focus on strengthening their strengths. How should they do that? Improving on a weakness is pretty easy and straight forward: You can make measurable progress by honing and practicing basic techniques. But developing a strength is a different matter, because simply doing more of what you're good at will yield only incremental improvements. If you are strong technically, becoming even more of a technical expert won't make you a dramatically better leader. If, however, you use what the authors call "nonlinear development"--similar to an athlete's cross-training--you can achieve exponential results. Your technical expertise will become more powerful if, for instance, you build on your communication skills, enabling you to explain technical problems both more broadly and more effectively. The authors, all from the leadership development consultancy Zenger Folkman, present a step-by-step process by which developing leaders can identify their strengths (through either a formal or an informal 360-degree evaluation), select appropriate complementary skills (the article identifies up to a dozen for each core strength), and develop those skills to dramatically improve their strengths--making themselves uniquely valuable to their companies.     

Recreational Conflict Is Affective: The Case of Cross-Country Skiers and Snowmobiles

The authors conducted a field experiment to test the assumption that subjective feelings are important in recreation conflict. During a weekend, cross-country skiers in a popular recreation area were assigned randomly to an experimental group who were exposed to an operating snowmobile, and a control group who were not exposed. Both groups completed a self-report questionnaire to provide information on their subjective experiences during their outing. The experimental group answered the questions five to ten minutes after encountering a snowmobile. Participants were not informed about the connection between the snowmobile and the investigation, and the questions regarding effects were answered before any clues were given about snowmobiles being an issue. Results showed that relative to the control group, skiers who encountered a snowmobile had their affective quality significantly reduced. Moreover, encountering a single snowmobile had an effect on participants' beliefs about the extent to which noise from snowmobiles disturbed the quality of ski-touring in general.